It is a complicated week in the life of the church.  A Holy Week, but a week that involves many things, with many mixed emotions. 
 
There’s the excitement of Palm Sunday.  Jesus enters Jerusalem and crowds gather to welcome him, to put down their cloaks, to shout hosanna, blessed is he!  But even that excitement is tempered with irony.  The crowds shout hosanna and call Jesus their king.  A few days later that title will come back at Jesus when the prosecuting Roman governor asks, “are you the king of the Jews?”  These adoring crowds will, in a few, short days, change their cries to that of “crucify him!”  The excitement of Palm Sunday turns to the anguish of betrayal on Maundy Thursday.  It moves to the deep grief of death on Good Friday and the loss of hope on Saturday.  Then, however, on Sunday, there is the empty tomb.  There is the resurrection, the assurance of new life.  There is victory over death; there is restoration of hope.  This week is a collision of religious expression and a collision of emotions.
 
Perhaps this collision is exactly where we need to be.  Rather than staying in the triumphal entry, rather than to moving on to the passion and depths of Jesus’s suffering, rather than skipping right ahead to the joy of Easter, perhaps we need to stay in the confusion of all these things happening simultaneously.  Rather than wrapping things up nicely and neatly, we stay right here, in the collision of joy, pain, suffering and anticipation.  We stay right here in the collisions and complications and learn how to cope with them. 
 
Because life is this way.  It isn’t black and white.  It is shades of gray.
 
Sending your child off to the bus stop for the first day of school isn’t black and white.  It’s an exciting milestone.  Yet it is scary to let go and trust that he can cope with school.  There’s pride in watching that little person step out on her own.  Yet it is painful to recognize that she can be part of the world without you.  It’s shades of gray.
 
Faith is this way too.  The Christian faith is a story of complications and collisions.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Anyone who will lose their life shall save it.  We are simultaneously sinners and set free from our sin.  God is great and God is humble.  The kingdom is now and the kingdom is yet to come.  Absolutes are not what we’re after.  Experiences of love and grace are.  And neither of those is clear-cut. 
 
Love can mean saying no to a child.  Love can mean setting boundaries and expectations for the people who ask the church for financial assistance.  Love can mean turning off life support.  Love is a messiah entering Jerusalem on a stolen colt.
 
Grace is an empty tomb.  Grace is a crucifixion.  Grace is a lamb sitting on the monarch’s throne.   
 
Delving into these collisions of emotion, we begin to see that what is complicated and complex can be broken down into smaller parts and named.  Finally, in that delving and naming we arrive at what is most true, most sincere in our experience and being.  It is not black and white.  It is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark. 1:1).

Editor’s Note: This is the transcript of a sermon preached on June 17, 2007. We have decided to publish it now, on the QTL blog, because of the on-going need for religion in America to allow itself to be defined by grace more than by hostility; by including rather than excluding; by humility rather than pious posturing. Some of the references are dated specifically to the week of June 17, 2007, but the point remains the same today as it did on June 17th.

Today’s lectionary reading (Luke 7:36-39), like all lectionary readings, is the reading that was heard in nearly every church around the world this week. Christians from all over the world heard, this week, about the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her hair. It’s an amazing event that Luke records. This woman who had not lived her life very well….who was looked down upon by all, ignored, mocked…..she hears that Jesus – the only one in this woman’s world who did not ignore her or look down on her, but instead reaffirmed his love for her as someone who God made and loves – no matter how much she had marred that image of God – she hears that Jesus was going to be eating at a home nearby and she went there to wash his feet with the best oil money could buy. No one had asked her to be there, and the host certainly did not want her there. But there she was, weeping at Jesus’ feet…her tears of gratitude dropping on his feet which she wiped off with her hair.  Now, we don’t know when Jesus forgave her, Luke doesn’t say. The text, if I have read it correctly, makes clear that she is not forgiven because of the way she washes his feet that night. Her acts of love and gratitude are the result of having been forgiven at another time, and she was so moved, she is so grateful…that when she heard he was going to be nearby, she had to be there.

Now, Jesus often acknowledged and blessed people that the world deemed unworthy. And it was often the response of the religious leaders looking on to see such actions by Jesus, as they did in this case, as clear evidence that he was certainly not divine…certainly not holy….because such radical forgiveness was not a reflection of the God they wanted to know. For God to be so radical, so inclined to love a woman like this, was to expose in neon lights how little these religious leaders and the other guests that night were actually reflecting the God they claimed to know.

There is a message here – a call to each of us to think on how well we know and are willing to reflect the God of Jesus Christ. And it is this message that Jesus wants not only to underscore, but to help his host, the other guests and all of us here understand what it looks like to reflect the God of Jesus Christ.

And so he asks his host, who was clearly uncomfortable with the woman and how Jesus was handling everything…he asks his host about two men who owed debts to the same lender, one much larger a debt than the other, both of which the lender forgave. Now Jesus has talked about forgiving debts before, but on this night he asked his host which of the two men will love the lender more. The host answers correctly, Jesus says – the man who had more debt forgiven loved the lender more, which leads Jesus to say these truly revolutionary words: “He who has been forgiven little loves little.”

Now, it is important to note that there are many different kinds of love and many different Greek words for love. In this case, the word used to describe the love the men feel at having their debt forgiven is the same word Jesus uses when he talks about those who are forgiven little, love little. The word used means: moral love. In other words, being forgiven ignites in the forgiven a moral re-compassing, a gratitude that reflects not the relief one feels when they have gotten off the hook, but rather the transforming humility one feels as the recipient of a sacrifice they did not earn or deserve. 
When we forgive, we give someone the gift of grace….think of forgiveness as the wrapping paper on a gift called grace. And it is that grace, grace that reflects who God is, not who we are, it is that grace that moves, that reforms, that reignites a moral love in the human heart. To forgive is not always the option I want to choose. And if you’re like me, it’s not always the option you want to choose either. We get angry, it’s natural, we get angry when we have been wronged in some way, and if the other person has done nothing to earn my forgiveness….just my wrath, then to forgive – especially the big things - is not my first instinct. But Jesus never said we need to change the world, he said we need to allow God to change the world through us. To forgive, even when we don’t want to, is to do nothing less than take part in building God’s Kingdom on this earth. To forgive is to pave a road for God’s grace to become real in the life of another, who is moved to humility and gratitude as the recipient of a pardon they did not earn. It is a radical message. But this, if I understand it correctly, is the way Jesus says God works. It is the concept of the cross. Grace is limited to no one, is not earned and is by our worldly measures, not fair. I imagine this is what the host was thinking that night at his home, as this woman that he looked down upon in every respect was shown such grace and love by Jesus. I can hear him thinking, “You forgave her?” This forgiveness concept is so radical. Not many liked to hear it. It’s hard to hear today……unless you’re one of the people that is forgiven…or you’re one of the people who (though they may not know it) are held captive by the anger, the disgust they hold for another person who has wronged them in some way. Forgiveness is a radical notion. Make no mistake about it. But I think what we learn from Jesus is that when we choose to forgive – we become a vehicle through which God’s grace can break into this world to heal, to make whole.

Imagine how these words, these radical words from Luke, must have been heard this week when they were read in churches in South Africa, where so many people know through their own experience and the living out of his call to forgive, that the words of Jesus are true. I imagine a lot of those people who forgave, did not want to. But they had trust that through forgiveness, they were giving the gift of God’s radical grace, which heals both the giver and the given. I wonder how these words have been heard this week at Duke, where yesterday the DA was found guilty of lying about the case involving the lacrosse team. I wonder how these words have been heard this week in Liberia, where the hearings have just begun for their ousted leader who wreaked such havoc, caused such pain and loss for so many Liberians.  Did these words fall on rocky ground? Will they take root in the heart of just one, who will begin to allow her life to be used as a vehicle for the breaking in of God’s Kingdom in that hurting land? How were these words heard in Iraq this week? How were they heard in New York? How were they heard in Gaza, where ancient angers and hatreds have reared their heads again this week in violence? Will just one allow his life to become a gift of grace, wrapped in the cover of forgiveness?

How do we hear these words? Does your concept of forgiveness has a limit? Are there, in other words, some offenses for which forgiveness is not an option and may actually be considered the immoral thing to do? I admit that there are limits beyond which I would have a very hard time to forgive. But if I understand Jesus, to forgive is to offer grace, not my grace, but God’s…and God’s grace is the only thing, the only power that can transform the human heart. And if God’s grace knows no limits, after all the cross was meant for every single person, good & bad, than how can forgiveness know limits?  The more willing we are to forgive, the more able we are to be a builder in God’s Kingdom.

So I think the main question, the main message that comes out of this evening meal we have read about today is: How willing are we to give birth to moments of grace? That’s ultimately what forgiveness does….it gives birth to moments of grace. This is what we are seeing in this incredible display of the woman washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiping those tears from his feet with her hair….we see the overwhelming joy of a new person who has been birthed by grace.

If we live in the world this way…And it’s not easy, in fact it is very hard…and I am no master of it…..but if we choose to see the grace that can be given rather than the sin that has been…we help create men & women like the one who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair: people who have been transformed by grace. We live in a world filled with both sin & the potential for grace, all the time. What do we see? I think the point Jesus is making is that a life lived for him, is a life that chooses to see the grace that could be….over the sin that was.

In a (quite good and interesting) recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Targets of Aggression” (Chronicle Review, October 5, 2007), David Barash considers the matter of misplaced aggression and like  countless others before him—preachers and Christian educators foremost among them—cites Jesus’ teachings “to love our enemies and if slapped, turn the other cheek.”  Indeed, Jesus did say these things.  And their meaning is obvious.  No?  Well, maybe.

Again, like countless others before him, Barash summarizes Jesus’ teachings along these lines: “absorb pain without passing it on.”  Just take it.  That’s the godly, or Godly, or What-would-Jesus-do way to be.  And anyway, what other way to be is there—aggression?!  Even were one to condone violence and, to put that more honestly, when one condones violence (since most of do, at some point[s]) in the name of vengeance or justice or something(s) in between, s/he would need to admit that aggressive response is a move and a set of actions that results much moreso in misplaced or displaced aggression toward some (weaker and/or available) other than it does in action directed at the aggressor. Think of biblical stories, history, “scapegoating” of all kinds and, if/as you will, various current military conflicts. 

And in our heart of hearts, we (many of us) would agree that violent aggression is not godly.  So, where does that leave us?  Back at “absorb pain without passing it on”?

Barash asserts within his article that “we might all be well advised to explore not only how pain and aggression are typically misplaced or displaced, but also how they should be placed.”  I agree!  Indeed, I think that in many and significant ways, which Barash along with countless others—preachers and Christian educators foremost among them —does not explore, this is precisely where Jesus’ teachings kick in (pardon the, arguably, aggressive metaphor). 

As scholarly work on Jesus in his Roman/Galilean context has shown, far from simply asking or demanding that his followers simply “absorb pain,” Jesus actually teaches in these sayings a creative response which neither simply absorbs nor passes on pain.  Rather, Jesus invites and models a creative redirection back onto the aggressor.  Listen again, as if for the first time: 

1) “you feel privileged to slap me in public with the (socially acceptable) right hand, well then let me turn my check, giving you the opportunity–and literally forcing your hand, if you so choose to follow through–to slap me again with the (not socially acceptable) left hand”;
2) “you feel justified in suing me in open court for my last set of pants and shirt, well then, here, take my underpants and undershirt too”;
3) “you’re going to  press me into service to carry your gear for a mile (as Roman soldiers are privileged to do), then I’ll go ahead and carry it another mile too (putting the Roman soldier under threat of having broken the rules of engagement).

Dubbed Jesus “third way” (by Walter Wink, whose writings have been influential on the matter), these teachings creatively turn the tables back onto aggressors in a manner that potentially threatens their social standing and suggests to them, and to others, the limits of their presumed power and even of the systems which uphold that power.  They provide precisely that which Barash’s article, and our world, is crying out for–both a break in the aggression : misplaced aggression paradigm, and an alternative to simply absorbing pain.

God help us to continue hearing, and applying, Jesus’ teachings in paradigm breaking, and habit breaking, ways!